Episode 129 Transcript

Heather Porter (00:02.702)

Hello, you guys, welcome to episode 129. Over the span of this show, if you've been listening for a while, you know, I always ask my guests the very first question, what are a few things that you do to grow your business smarter, to sort of keep overwhelm under control? And oftentimes we hear advice back such as routines and perspective changes and

 

tangible tips about working smarter. Definitely a combination, sometimes of physical versus mindset. But one thing that's rarely probably been discussed, if at all, is around energy, not your physical energy. But we'll go a little bit woo woo here for a minute. Energy meaning like other people's energy, the energy that you're exposed to.

 

that's around you day in and day out. And I wanted to talk about this because I think it's really, really important. And I'm going to have a fun story to tell you back in the days when I ran events. So stay with me. I'm not at all going to go off on some woo woo tangent. I do believe by the way, in a lot of different things that we can't tangibly see. I'm definitely a believer in certain things, but I'm not sort of.

 

One of those people, guess, that will go off and talk about that often, because this isn't really the time or the place in this podcast, but it is something that I do want to draw your attention to. And I think telling you a story is going to be a really, actually two stories, be a really great illustration of what I mean by paying attention to the energy that is around you. so here's the thing. If you are hustling hard, you're saying yes to a lot of things, right?

 

Like a lot of things you probably should not say yes to. Let's be honest, like there's the one thing we always talk about, it's about boundaries and knowing when to say no to things in your life.

 

Heather Porter (02:09.72)

However, sometimes we still say yes, even though we sort of energetically feel like, I shouldn't. And that kind of comes down to intuition as well. So one time that this was very, very, very evident to me was where I remember vividly taking a scoping call. So with all the incredible work we do with our clients, we have to know for the right fit. And that is a call to learn about their business and understand

 

where we can help them with their marketing. And so I had this call with this woman and I intuitively felt off like, or I energetically felt like I feel really drained when I am having this conversation. Like I felt exhausted. It was weird. And I should have listened to that, but you know, I was probably just more focused on at that point. I needed cashflow. needed a client to come in the door. And so I said, yes.

 

to this moment in time to working with her. And look, I am no energy expert, but definitely something was wrong when I got off the call and I was exhausted. Now I literally felt physically ill over the span of working with her. And I obviously, I did that myself, right? That's something that I created in myself. It's not her making me physically ill. I'm not trying to imply that whatsoever.

 

But I wanted to explain the situation to see if you could relate. So at the time I was in London, because sometimes I go over to London and I'll work there for a short amount of time. My partner's originally from London, so we'll go over there and do a bit of work. So the time was actually there for three months and I was doing work over there and I remember being there and it just kept getting worse and worse. So I had a team member here in Australia on our time zone.

 

And she's like, I won't work with this person. I'm not going to work with her. You have to remove me from her account. She was my project manager. And I was like, gosh, okay. She's like, I just, feel crazy when I work with her. Like, right. Okay. Yep. Great. I have to protect my team, of course. And so I removed her from the account. Now at the time that meant me, I had to take care of this client and there was

 

Heather Porter (04:31.658)

some big deadlines to hit as well. And here I was working on an opposite side of the world. First world problems, I know working from London, but I was there and my plan had that I had to maintain my workflow completely, you know, disappeared very quickly. So here I was working back with this client where I felt exhausted after every single exchange that we had. And I remember

 

physically starting to get sick as well. Like I felt nauseous. I started having heart palpitations. I don't know what I was doing to myself and what was going on here, but it just progressively got worse. And we just were not the right fit or there was something going on maybe in her life as well. I'm not really sure, but whatever was happening, energetically not good. I was drained to the core. We're starting to get physical symptoms and I'll never forget it. Cause I was just with a time that was supposed to have, you know,

 

fun as well. I was supposed to have be having some fun over there because it's the middle of summer for London. It wasn't. I felt sick. I felt drained. And I'm sure I'm not the only one affected by this, right? I'm sure you guys are here. And I know that some of you listening to this are you're actually practitioners in health and wellness too. And you're probably like, I know exactly what was going on. Well, for me, it was a lesson in saying no to things where I knew energetically intuitively I should not have.

 

but I'm sure there's other things here too, that maybe you could read into. But outside of that, regardless, I know that you guys can relate. I know there's been moments or people in your life where you're just like, that is not the right fit. So, and it's something to really strongly pay attention to really strongly. Like if it is a client that comes into your world or a prospect or a lead, and you're just like, you have this emotional or I should say energetic reaction. Listen to that. It's really important to listen to that.

 

and decide to say no if it's not the right fit for you. So, and by the way, as I was going and working with this client, I ended up finding out over that relationship that she had changed providers and brands. Well, first she changed providers like two times within six months. That's a bit of a red flag for me. But in the next two years, she worked with three other companies and changed her brand and her domain.

 

Heather Porter (06:56.61)

three different times. lots of challenges there, right? Craziness. So anyway, let's leave that chaos and that story behind. And I want to tell you something else, because this is quite a fun one. Where I sort of first started learning about energy in a different way. So as some of you know, if you've been listening for a while, I used to work in the personal development industry running huge seminars. So I had time spent with Tony Robbins, and then I worked with other speakers as well.

 

one speaker in particular, got very close with my team because we traveled all over the world. We were in four cities in Australia. We went to Asia. went to overseas, went to London and we did a lot of travel. So we got very close with each other and we. So we were a tight knit team and really, really got it right. And we'd always had these conversations around sort of helping each other out when, when times of energy got, we were drained of our energy essentially. And so I remember being at this event.

 

And let me just give you some backstory too. So basically we were in personal development. So we had people from all walks of life that would show up at these events and being on the team that ran the event. My role was in charge of the crew. So we had a team of crew, most volunteers that would come for the weekend and actually either be paid for some, there's a core team that were paid or volunteers to give their time to basically be there and do everything from customer service to sales to.

 

guarding doors and checking wristbands and lanyards to runners for the speakers, you name it, whatever is needed at the event. So we had all of these people there, big, huge production, and then all these participants from all walks of life. Going through crisis, a lot of them going through crisis and trying to make change in their life as well. So energetically, a lot going on just from running an event, you're quite drained and depleted, but then you have the energy of the participants as well. So

 

I remember that we as a team would look after each other and we would always sort of go, are you good today? Are you ready to take on all the energy that's going to be in the room? And one woman in particular, she pulled me aside and she goes, you look so drained. I'm like, I'm exhausted. And she said, okay, you need to put like an energetic barrier around yourself, so to speak. She's like, whatever you believe with that, however...

 

Heather Porter (09:21.378)

You want to take that she goes, you need to protect your energy from the energy of people that are going through crisis or trauma or unwell. and they're, they're going to be there to kind of suck yours, so to speak. And so I said, right. Okay. And she said, I have two like ideas for you. And she said, number one is pretend that you put on a big bear suit. I'm not kidding you guys a bear, like a brown bear suit, like a costume. She said, pretend that you put on a big bear suit.

 

and you're wearing that and that could be a protection mechanism or you zip yourself up in like a golden sleeping bag. So you have this big gold sleeping bag, whichever one you want. And I'm like, bear suit. bear suited this. And she goes, okay, now what you want to do is whenever somebody comes over to you and you feel like a great deal of toxicity or negative energy kind of coming at you, sucking into you, you need to.

 

on the bear suit or the golden sleeping bag and then you need to pretend like the words that they share with you are just sort of either tar kind of dripping off your back and going away or like symbolically think of the words that are draining you or making you anxious to like pretend that they're something else. And so ultimately my little routine was I would strap on a big bear suit energetically so to speak, right? A fictitional bear suit. when I would walk into the room with

 

5 ,000 participants, I'm managing a team of anywhere from 20 to 100 crew that had to make sure that everything was sorted. That was a huge job. would strap it in. I would put the bear suit on, so to speak, in my mind. My mind's eye. I'd put the bear suit on and be like, I'm ready to go. I'm like a big bear. And then I would have any negative energy that was sort of put my way or comments. I would pretend it was like tar and it would just kind of

 

on the bear suit and just drip down the bear suit to the floor. Weird, I know, but that worked for me. It worked for me. So that was my way of protecting myself, bearing my suit on, putting the bear suit on, protecting myself from all the energy in the room so I could do my job and leave feeling okay at the end of the day. Like truly not drained and depleted and physically ill. So that was something that I ended up doing and

 

Heather Porter (11:47.85)

It was just, yeah, an amazing sort of, I guess, conversation that one of the women I worked with gave me. And then from there, we'd kind of walk around to each other. You got your bear suit on, you got your sleeping bag on. We do as like a little thing at the beginning of each day to make sure we're protecting ourselves energetically. that's, guess, ultimately, I just wanted to bring this up as an additional thing, additional conversation for you guys to consider that you might be working really hard on your

 

your routines and your team and your, you know, your systems and all the things that we talk about on this show, but are you also looking after yourself energetically? And please, I'll leave you with two things. Remember to say no, if it's not a good energy fit for real, you will feel drained. You will know if it's not a good fit, you'll feel it. And I should have said no a long time ago to that situation. So yeah, say no. If you feeling it, it's not a good fit.

 

And if you're more sensitive to other people's energy, make sure to develop little sort of metaphorical rituals like the bear suit concept or the sleeping bag concept before you go into work, before you show up your computer or your office or with your team, or if you have a hard conversation you need to have, put that metaphorical protection on picture the words that come at you that are not good, well -serving for you. How are you going to kind of deal with them?

 

energetically, are they tar, are they little feathers that float off? I'm not kidding. When you start to put into practice some of these things, if you're not already doing it, can radically change how you feel in moments of stress and overwhelm, especially with sort of that negative energy that comes into your life. So hopefully this didn't go off on some crazy tangent. Some of you are probably like, Whoa, Heather, okay, that is something else. And I'm sure there's a lot of you that were like, yep.

 

totally get it and I needed that reminder. Okay, whatever it is, whatever direction, I hope you had fun with this episode and I will speak to you guys next time. We have loads more amazing guests coming up and really fun solo episodes I'm gonna bring your way as I start to transition into the end of 2024. Can't wait to share more with you guys soon. Talk soon. Bye.